See No Evil
by lionesseyes13
Summary: Life on a team is difficult for Jack, especially when dealing with the consequences of gambling, accusations of thievery, and addictions to drunken revelry. Rated T for hockey player language and some depressing themes in later chapters.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: As I promised some faithful readers back in the Dark Ages, here is a fic written from Jack O'Callahan's perspective that hopefully does justice to his unique viewpoint. Details about the boys' backgrounds are as accurate as possible, but the overarching plot of this story is original even if small pieces like Rob hiding his wallet from Jack are rooted in fact. The Irish proverbs are translations of some I learned during my trip to that green isle, and most of what I write about Boston comes from what I gleaned from visits to see my older sister, who is actually a graduate of BU. If readers have any questions about anything, they can feel free to ask in a review or a PM. I don't bite, because I'm not a cannibal.

"_The well-fed does not understand the lean."__**—Irish Proverb**_

Understand the Lean

Since it came every day as surely as the sunrise over Boston Harbor, Jack O'Callahan expected it, but that didn't mean it didn't grate like a razor blade scraping over a scab when Rob McClanahan—who by some vicious trick of the locker room arrangement had ended up in the stall beside Jack although he was the one Minnesotan player Jack's chances of a friendship with were in the purely theoretical number range—shot him a covert, scorching glare. It was the sort of look that was intended to be invisible but couldn't have been more obvious if it had been accompanied by a blaring neon sign about not trusting anyone with the scars of being reared in Charlestown carved into his cheeks. Then, the glancing around part of his ritual complete, Rob concealed his leather Ralph Lauren wallet in his rolled up sock, so it, presumably, would be more difficult for Jack to steal.

Jack's jaw tightened. He had seen that same wary, disdainful expression on the wealthy residents of the best neighborhoods in Boston—places with names as rarefied as their atmospheres like the Back Bay and Beacon Hill—when they scrolled up the windows of their Mercedes-Benz or their Ferrari while driving through the dangerous streets of Charlestown that they avoided whenever possible. It was a look of supreme arrogance, contempt, disgust, and fear that Jack defined as the identifying characteristic of unadulterated snobs everywhere. It was the twisted face of someone who kicked at a hobo, not caring or comprehending that the bum wouldn't be on the corner, rattling an old Coke can and begging for coins if he got enough to eat. It was the concrete expression of the person who spat at the crack addict in the gutter without considering what had pushed a creature to take refuge in a fog of drugs. It was the soulless face of the being who tossed a check into the church collection basket every week but believed any more charity would encourage laziness in the poor and wouldn't be very compassionate at all.

"You're from Saint Paul, right?" Jack asked tersely, wanting to prove that Rob wasn't any better than him, although based on Rob's haughty manner, odds were significantly above even that he had been raised in one of the more ritzy neighborhoods. Probably he had been perfecting the art of the withering, aristocratic glare since childhood in the same way he had been trained how to tip the caddy at the posh country club and whether to order white or red wine to complement the lamb chops and mint julep at the most exclusive restaurants where a single dish most likely equaled the income Jack's dad made in a week. The McClanahans certainly wouldn't have wanted anything less than the best for their precious son, and they could probably actually afford it unlike most of the parents in America.

"Excuse me?" Rob arched en eyebrow in a manner that made it clear he felt Jack should be the one seeking pardon for daring to interrupt the sanctity of his pre-practice taping of his stick and tying of his skates, which was always accomplished with fastidiousness that was on the verge of nose-diving into the psychotic.

"You're from Saint Paul, right?" repeated Jack in the slow tone he reserved for those whose minds he doubted were nimble enough to jump to a conclusion even with the benefit of a million stepping stones of evidence.

"I'm not going to tell _you_—" Rob placed just enough scornful emphasis on this pronoun to suggest that he might have told someone more trustworthy and wholesome like Rizzo or Jimmy—"where my family lives, because you'd probably show up in the middle of the night like a thug to rob them. Suffice to say I was raised in a gated community you couldn't get into even if you tried, so target someone else for your thievery."

Jack's fists clenched at this blatant insult to his honor, and only the thought of how many Herbies he would have to do if he punched the smug smirk off Rob's face made him keep his hands to himself, as he snorted. "Oh, yeah, you have to keep poor bastards like me out of an exclusive community where nice families like yours flock to be safe sheep, don't you?"

"Exactly." Rob gave a final, decisive tug on each skate string. "I'm glad we understand each other. This has been such a productive conversation that I don't suppose we'll ever need to have another one again, which is just marvelous."

"I'm not done talking yet." Jack gritted his teeth. "I understand your simple mind just fine, since it's written all over your hideous face, but you don't understand me, and that's a problem as devastating as the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. You see, I have too much integrity to steal, especially from someone with microscopic taste like you, because you know what they say about money not being able to buy style, and I have standards."

Rob flushed to the roots of his dark hair as Jack had known that he would. Attending a college as expensive as BU on scholarship had taught him that children of privilege found nothing—even the implication that they were dirt poor—as embarrassing as the notion that they might have wealthy but not class.

Pivoting on his skate blades and striding toward the door, Rob retorted, "I wouldn't expect you, being raised in a place like Charelestown, to appreciate true culture and sophistication. It would be akin to asking an ant to comment insightfully on an opera."

As Rob vanished into the corridor that led onto the rink, Jack demanded in an incisive voice with sufficient volume that he could be confident Rob could hear every word, "Isn't it a fucking pity that pampered assholes such as him can't stay locked up in their gated communities and leave the rest of us peasants the hell alone?"

"Nah, if we trapped the human vultures of North Oaks—that's Rob's charming hometown, by the way—together, we'd be encouraging cannibalism." Phil Verchota chuckled as he slipped into his pads. "I'm not sure my mom would want me to live with that on my conscience. I bet she'd say she taught me better than that."

"Anyway, Mac isn't really so bad once you get to know him," added Bill Baker as soon as Phil had finished speaking, as always trying to bank a fire before it could ignite with his calm logic. "When he chooses to stop being a jerk, he can actually be pleasant to hang out with, so it's just a shame that his overwhelming first impression is that of—"

"An insufferable snot in desperate need of a smack-down," chimed in Steve Christoff, adjusting his shoulder pads. "Yep, that just about sums up the Mac situation in less than a paragraph."

"He's just slow-to-warm-up." Eric Strobel's statement was obscured by the jersey he was yanking over his head.

"What a smoking mound of bullshit." Jack glanced around the locker room to ascertain that Mark Johnson had already existed for practice, and then contorted his mouth into a full-fledged sneer. "He warmed up to Magic right away, chatting him up on the bench the moment they met like it was love at first sight in some crappy Hollywood romance."

"Well, Magic is a lot less intimidating than you are, OC." Eric eyed Jack tentatively for a few seconds before taking the plunge, "You look like everything Rob has been taught to fear in a person, even if you aren't actually everything he's afraid of, so his fear comes out as anger, since he's decided that's more socially acceptable than pissing his pants."

"Forwards are cavemen so easily deceived by appearances." Jack rolled his eyes in disparagement of a position he deemed as requiring less mental acumen to fill effectively on a team. "Defensemen realize that if somebody seems safe, they represent a disaster waiting to happen. As a defenseman, I recognize that Mark Johnson might look as innocent as a buttercup, but he is really the scariest person on our team when the puck—as it so often is—is on his stick."

"Give this dude a star sticker." Phil clapped in mock admiration. "He is the last one to see that Mark's peril is in how he totally lulls you into underestimating him up until the second after he has utterly humiliated you."

"Very funny, but don't quit hockey to pursue a career as a comedian, since your jokes are even lamer than your passes." Jack stuck out his tongue and then busied himself with his last preparations for practice.

When he trailed onto the ice in a stream of his teammates a couple of minutes later, he warmed up by skating and stretching with Rizzo and Silky before Herb and Coach Patrick arrived for the next scheduled torture session.

Jack's muscles were limber and loaded with adrenaline when Herb stepped onto the ice, blew his whistle, and discovered a cluster of players around him within two moments.

"Offense stuns opponents, gentlemen, but defense strangles them," Herb opened with a grand pronouncement as was his penchant once he was convinced that everyone's attention was riveted on him. "Defensive responsibility earns you offensive freedom, not the other way around. If you play how I want you to without the puck, you can experiment when you have it. In open ice, circle and pass all you want, but don't turn the puck over at your blue line, and when the puck is along the boards or near your goalie's crease, play physical if you have to, because that's where your opponents can take advantage of you to rack up the points. The Russians are correct about exploiting the space of open ice to pass and wheel about, but the Canadians are wise to protect the boards and crease with their sticks and bodies. Play like a Russian on open ice and like a Canadian along the boards or near the crease. We want to use a hybrid style that draws on the best of Russian and Canadian hockey. We're not inventing the wheel; we're just being the first to attach it to a box in order to make a wagon."

"In other words," Jack remarked in an undertone to Silky, who was closest, "we should play like our team is the bastard from a one night stand between Russia and Canada. Got it."

As Silky snorted in amusement, Herb's eyes narrowed, but he continued to outline his drill without ripping off Jack or Silky's head, which Jack regarded as a triumph, "Our scrimmage today emphasizes defensives responsibility above all else. If you're on the ice when a goal is scored against your team in this drill, you'll have to do ten push-ups in full equipment, unless you're the goalie, in which case you'll only have to do two. Morrow and Suter, you take the blue line in front of Janny. O'Callahan and Ramsey, I want you patrolling the blue line in front of Craig. Johnson, McClanahan, and Strobel, you're the forwards for Janny's side. Pavelich, Schneider, and Harrington, you're the forwards for Craig's team. Everyone else, pile onto the bench to wait for the next shift. Move it!"

As Jack fell back to assume a defensive position in front of Jimmy's net, he watched Mike Ramsey skate over to the opposite side to play as his partner. If he were to shut his eyes and think of Rammer, Jack decided, before he imagined Rammer's occasional punishing body checks or his amicable expression, he would picture Rammer's sheer size. Size was Rammer's defining attribute-what made his coaches marvel and pro scouts drool enough to draft him in the first round. It was what allowed him to play a game of strength melded with agility, a commanding mix of offensive firepower in a booming slapshot and electric passes blended with a pounding defense of exuberant checks. He would be an excellent partner in this exercise—mighty in their own zone but able to contribute opportunistically to the offense.

With their forwards, Jack reflected, they were equally fortunate. Rob and Mark might have been deployed on the penalty kill as often as they were on the powerplay, but, owing to their unconventional style forged on the lakes of the Iron Range, the Coneheads were often thrown over the boards when Herb wanted to shut down the opposing team's top line. They were the ideal energy line, since they could be relied upon to seize control of a game and turn the momentum in their team's favor. They also played with a level of synchronization that Rob and Mark couldn't hope to rival. Rob and Mark might have established chemistry as quickly as any coach could have expected, but their knowledge of where one another would be was rooted in reason and repetition rather than the intuition and creativity that permitted the Coneheads to sense with unerring accuracy where their linemates would be a second or a minute in the future. Rob and Mark played a disciplined brand of hockey, and the Coneheads played wild pond hockey.

Dragging himself out of his musings and back to reality, Jack watched Pav take the opening faceoff against Mark. Mark won and slid the puck over to Rob, who accepted the pass and glided up the left wing. Snickering at the chance to check Rob's huge ego, Jack plowed him into the boards in a clean but crushing hit, stripped him of the puck, and then rocketed it across the ice toward Pav.

"You're a hockey player, not an egg, McClanahan," barked Herb, and Jack wished that a monument could be built to commemorate this and every other time the snob named Rob McClanahan received a small bit of his comeuppance. "Take a hit without cracking to make a play, or don't bother playing at all, damn it."

His lips pursing into a quarter moon grin, Jack stared in awe at Pav, who shimmied up ice like a salmon swimming upstream and sent a pass sailing across to Buzz, who launched a shot that landed in the net an inch beyond Janny's outstretched glove.

"Drop and give me ten, boys," Herb rapped out.

Gesturing grandiosely at the ice as he skated back to offer Rob ample space for push-ups, Jack said in his best approximation of a butler's subservient manner, "Your room, Your Majesty."

"Go sodomize a zebra," hissed Rob, as he dropped to the ice and started doing push-ups.

"Do you mean the kind you meet on a safari in Africa or the sort you find making incompetent calls in arenas around the globe?" Jack inquired with exaggerated innocence, as if he were merely seeking clarification of a sensible, legitimate proposition.

"Obviously the latter." Rob wrinkled his nose as he continued his push-ups, grunting after each one. "I don't condone animal cruelty, especially to endangered species."

"Oh, but you do support rape?" Jack tilted his head and furrowed his brow as though he were genuinely baffled. "Is that what you're implying?"

"Nope." Rob completed his push-ups and shoved himself upright with a scowl. "Wearing those stripes, the refs _clearly _ask for whatever abuse they get."

"You have some fucked up ideas." Jack stifled a snicker, since he didn't want to share a single laugh with Rob McClanahan and prayed to the Mother Mary to intercede on his behalf for Herb to resume the scrimmage soon.

"Definitely." Plainly losing interest in Jack, Rob inspected the tape on his stick. "The best part is that, if Freud's correct, they probably all involve sex in some fashion."


	2. Chapter 2

_"__It is sweet to drink but bitter to pay for."—_**_Irish Proverb_**

Bitter to Pay for

"Time to go into damage control mode." Rizzo munched meditatively on a barbecue chicken wing as he studied his poker cards as though hoping his hand had changed since the last time he had increased the ante by ten dollars. Throwing his cards facedown on the bar table, he concluded dramatically, "I fold."

"We should all be so wise," observed Cox from the chair beside Rizzo, swirling a curly fry through a mound of ketchup on his plate and then tossing it down his gullet.

"Spoken like someone trying to up the bets." Jack waggled an onion ring dipped in horseradish sauce at Cox. "I'm onto your ploys, so don't imagine that I'll fall for them."

"How about it, Cox?" demanded Silky, whose hands were trembling as he lifted a Sam Adams—Jack hadn't kept track of which bottle Silky was on, because he didn't want to accumulate enough evidence to challenge Silky's assurances that he only had a few beers every now and then—to his lips. Jack chose to believe that Silky's fingers and palms were shaking from excitement at a strong poker hand rather than from too much alcohol. Sometimes, Jack figured, people found themselves stumbling through their lives blindfolded, and they tried to deny that they were the ones who had securely tied the knot. It was that way for Rizzo and him with Silky's drinking. If Silky swore until his cheeks were bleached and bled like the blueberries baked into muffins that he only drank for fun and could stop whenever he wished, they nodded as if they were totally convinced that Silky was in the driver's seat of his relationship with alcohol. If Silky's hands wavered when he was supposedly sober, they turned away. If Jack mentioned Silky's drinking, it became his problem, not Silky's. Despite that, Jack couldn't even imagine ending their friendship. Too many of his fondest memories of BU hockey were entwined with Silky; to extract them would mean losing the flavor of his college years. "Are you going to fold, match, raise, or just whine like a bitch begging to be fucked?"

"You obviously need more lady love in your life." Cox scowled at his cards for a final second before slapping them facedown on the table. "I'm folding, too, because I can practically hear my wallet screaming for mercy, so I don't want to drain it dry on one hand."

"I raise the bet by twenty dollars." His speech slightly slurred and his movements jerky, Silky forward to deposit three twenty dollar bills into the pot at the center of their table with fingers that seemed to be too thick and clumsy to hold or release the cash smoothly.

"I'll see you that." Jack pushed sixty dollars into the pot. Deciding to interpret Silky's trembling hands as a sign that the other guy had a good hand and hoping to cut his loses while still giving himself a shot at victory, he went on, "I call."

Hoping that a Full House with two fives and three eights would be powerful enough to defeat whatever Silky's cards held, Jack flipped his hand face-up on the table. Then he locked his gaze on the cards Silky had just shown. His eyes flicking across the cards Silky had placed on the table, he saw that Silky had a Full House, too, but Silky's consisted of two fours and three sevens.

"Tie breaker goes to me," crowed Jack, as he swooped in to collect the pot and tuck his new wealth into his wallet like a magpie hoarding treasure. "More money in the bank for me."

"You don't need to sound so smug." Cox glared across the table at Jack. "I had a Four of a Kind that would've spanked your Full House black and blue if I'd stayed in the game."

"Exactly, if you'd stayed in the game." Jack smirked as he wrinkled his nose and took a sip of his Corona. Although—like any proud Irishman reared in Charlestown—he had enjoyed drinking ever since he was nine and his dad had slipped him a sample of Guinness on St. Patrick's Day when they were watching a Celtics game on the ratty living room sofa while his mom was too busy cooking corned beef and cabbage in the kitchen to monitor how her husband was corrupting their son, Jack had always hated the smell of alcohol. It was a weird quirk, but no stranger, he supposed, than those of people who couldn't stand the smell of gasoline and hand to hold their noses while filling up their fuel tanks. "You didn't have the balls to do that, and poker isn't about the cards you're dealt. It's about having the balls of steel necessary to stay in the game long enough to win it big."

That was partly what it was about, anyway, but Jack wasn't about to spill all his secret strategy to a rival player. Poker was also about being able to read other people's tells—ragged breathing, furrowed brows, sweaty cheeks, fevered eyes, shaking palms, and nervous hands twisting through hair or massaging temples—to predict what hands they held, as well as manipulating one's fellow players so that they believed that they knew what cards you had when really they had no clue. As a microcosm of life, poker wasn't about what cards you had been dealt, and only the frightfully small-minded imagined that it was. The true brilliance of a master poker player was in how he could mold the minds of his opponents so that every hand—no matter how low—became a winning one. In poker, as with life, it wasn't about the cards that you were dealt, but rather what you chose to do with them, which was why Jack had never been one to fold. Folding was surrendering, and surrendering was just admitting that you weren't clever enough to win with a shitty hand when everyone knew that genuine champions saved their most impressive triumphs for when they had the crappiest cards.

"I'm two hundred bucks in the red on the night." Silky's teeth crunched into a mozzarella stick as the jukebox in the corner began to warble out Dolly Parton's "Jolene" as a gaggle of giggling girls dumped what appeared to be an entire change purse into the juke, and Jack resigned himself to an hour's worth of romantic trash probably of the country variety, since this was Minnesota, after all. "Maybe my luck will improve."

"It better not while you're dealing," warned Rizzo, while Silky gathered up the cards and shuffled them, transforming them into a fan for a moment. "I'd find that about as suspicious as BU's Mystery Meat Casserole."

"That's a very misleadingly named dish, since there's no mystery to the meat." Jack snickered over Dolly Parton wheedling Jolene not to take her man just because she could. "Obviously, it's horse flesh from mares and stallions skinned alive."

"You're a disgusting brute who deserves to be boiled alive in your own fat." Silky snorted as Dolly Parton crooned on about how easy it would be for Jolene's auburn hair and emerald eyes to steal her man, but Jolene had to understand what her man meant to her and how she could never love again, unlike Jolene, who could have her choice of guys. Shoving the shuffled deck at Jack, Silky ordered, "Cut."

"Disgusting brutes are the best company," remarked a familiar voice that was thick with whiskey as the pining of "Jolene" was replaced by the melancholy strains of " The Rose" by Bette Midler. Glancing up from the deck he was dividing at random, Jack saw the rink janitor, Drew O'Dowd, scooting a chair over from a nearby table that had just emptied. "My friends are all done gambling for the evening, but today's pay day, and I still have some money to burn. Want to deal me in?"

"Sure," Silky answered when Jack returned the cut deck to him. "Anyone with a hole in their pocket is welcome to join the fun."

"Please show us how we'd all be poorer without your presence," added Jack, eyes sparkling slyly, while Silky dealt the cards Jack had handed him and Bette Midler sang about how it was the dream afraid of waking that never took a chance, the one who wouldn't be taken who could never really give, and the soul that was afraid of dying that never truly lived.

"How is your family doing, Drew?" Rizzo offered this stereotypically Italian inquiry and was probably fully prepared for Drew to launch into a detailed description of the emotional welfare of a third cousin twice removed.

"That's such a boring question." Silky groaned, as he finished dealing the cards, and Bette ended her song on a high note by reminding her audience that love wasn't only for the lucky and the strong, because under the winter's snow lurked the seed that with the spring sun's kiss would blossom into the rose. "It's almost as bad as asking what a person thinks of the weather. Drinking with you is worse than drinking with a fucking grandma."

"My family is doing all right, thanks." Drew swiped a lock of ginger hair that matched his freckles out of his cucumber eyes so that he could better examine the hand that he had been dealt. "The wife is busy waitressing and wishing that people tipped better. My little Molly, who just turned five in August, started Kindergarten yesterday, and the teacher sent her home with a list a mile long of supplies she needs."

"How does she like school?" asked Rizzo, opening the gambling by tossing a wadded ten dollar bill into the pot while the jukebox began booming Abba's "The Winner Takes It All."

"She loves it." Drew's beam sliced across a face that was as pale as egg whites. "She came home with a picture of a kitten for her mommy to hang up on the fridge, and she can't stop chattering on about how kind and smart her teacher is."

"Of course she can't." Cox chuckled into his beer as he threw a twenty dollar bill into the pot. "All Kindergarten teachers are angels supposed to make your introduction to learning a happy one. It's only when you reach fifth grade or so that teachers begin to become bitches designed to make you hate school."

"Molly will never hate school." Drew shook his head, while Silky raised the ante again by hurling two twenty dollar bills into the pot. "She's bright as a ray of sunshine. The wife and I never taught her how to read, because we didn't have the time, but she can do it anyway, and she's always begging us to take her to the library so she can get new books to read."

Wondering if his own dad had rambled on so proudly about how clever Jack was when he was drinking and gambling away too much of another pay check (because every time he was convinced that one day he would get lucky in poker and that he would find happiness buried at the bottom of an ale flagon like the mythical pot of gold hidden at the end of the rainbow where the leprechauns danced), Jack suggested, shaping every syllable into a knife intended to dig into Drew's heart, "Shouldn't you be at home reading to your daughter, helping her with her homework, or tucking her into bed and making sure that no monsters are lurking in the shadows of her closet? How can you talk about how much time you don't have to see her when you choose to get drunk and play poker instead?"

"You don't know what the hell you're talking about, so don't be an asshole." Drew's jaw tightened so the veins stuck out of his neck like wires, while Jack, sitting comfortably on a Royal Flush, decided to sweeten the pot by dumping two fifty dollar bills into it. "Until you're a dad, you can't judge me."

"It's not my judgment you have to worry about." Jack ripped open an onion ring before biting into its delicate, translucent skin. "Really, it's what your little girl thinks about you that matters, but just know that she'll hate you as soon as she figures out how much of your life you choose to spend in the gutter, and, if she's as clever as you claim, that understanding and hatred will come quicker than you could possibly believe."

"I'll see that and raise you fifty." Drew's lips thinned as he dropped three fifty dollar bills into the pot. "Can you college boys keep up with that, huh?"

Staring at Drew with a loathing so intense it gave him heartburn, Jack remembered the first time that he had recognized that the love he felt for his own father had been mixed with hatred and fear. A six-year-old Jack had snuck out of bed to wait for his dad to return home because he wanted Dad to fly him around the apartment like an airplane, and he had crouched behind the living room sofa until Dad entered, smelling of whiskey and Guinness.

There was nothing unusual about that, since all the memories Jack had of his father were redolent of alcohol—even the good ones, when Dad was bending down to kiss Jack good night or straighten Jack's tie before he graduated from Boston Latin. Dad's alcoholism was a cologne, one Jack used to lean into when he was a child and one that he was both drawn to and repelled by as an adult.

That night when Jack was six the church bells at St. Francis de Sales had rung midnight before Dad stumbled into the apartment and banged into the couch, causing Jack to gasp. The noise must have terrified or humiliated Dad, who had fumbled behind the sofa until his fist clenched around Jack's ear.

Biting his lip hard enough to bleed, Jack had barely managed to swallow a whimper as his father yanked him up by the ear.

"You filthy rat, sneaking and spying on your dad when you should be in bed," Dad had snarled, those long and damning syllables a boozy breeze across Jack's face. Then Dad had cuffed him across the head so forcefully that he literally saw stars, and Jack was amazed that could actually happen—that it wasn't just something invented for a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

"Don't hit me!" Flaring up when all he had wanted to do was fold in on himself like a damp paper bag, Jack had swung at his father's beer belly, well-aware that his tiny fists would inflict no harm on the big man. "I was just waiting up for you!"

"Son, I didn't mean to strike you." Dad had pulled Jack to his chest, where Jack could hear the tattoo of his heart, as his palms smoothed Jack's mussed hair and burning cheeks. "You forgive me, don't you? You know I'd never hurt you. You and me, we're in this together, aren't we?"

"I'm going to sleep," Jack had muttered, edging away from his father, as a red flare exploded in his brain, screaming that he was a rat, after all.

"Well, good night, then, my boy." Dad smiled his loose smile: the one that he used when he was embarrassed—not to be confused with the brilliant smile, the one he wore when he was completely lit; or the fake smile, the one that made Jack's stomach feel like a guitar strung to tightly.

Now Jack thought with resentment as bitter as black coffee that if he was asked for five concrete recollections of his childhood, chances were that three of them would involve some fiasco involving his father's drinking: the time it was Dad's turn to be the leader of Jack's Boy Scout Troop, and everyone had arrived to find Dad inebriated and doing the Disco in his underwear; the Bruins games Dad had promised they would watch together but had slept through because he was too hung over; the sting of his fingers on Jack's face when he actually wanted to punish himself.

Those memories were the pillars Jack had built his life on, but hiding in the corners behind them were the other recollections, the ones that peeked out only when Jack let down his guard. The hazy Saturday afternoon Jack and his dad crouched with their heads tilted over the sidewalk, watching ants construct a mobile city. His voice, off-key, singing Jack awake to "Molly Malone" or "Foggy Dew." The summer days at the Paul Revere Park when he stacked trash bags on the green and ran a hose over them to make a water-slide.

In a better light, Dad's inconstancy became spontaneity, and having an occasional father was better than having none at all, as Silky would point out if given half an opportunity, so Jack had to be grateful. No, Jack hadn't wanted to grow up in an apartment like his, but he had, and he hadn't wanted to turn out just like his father, either, but he had.

"This is getting to expensive for me." Rizzo whistled, dragging Jack back to the present with a jolt and turning his cards facedown on the table. "I'm cutting my loses and folding again."

"Amen. Preach it from every altar. Rizzo speaks the truth, brothers." Cox slammed his cards down on the table and chomped into a fry smeared with ketchup. "I'm folding, too."

"Monkey see, monkey do." Shrugging, Silky folded as well. "The ball's in your court now, Jack."

"Good thing I have the balls to see you and raise you fifty, Drew." Fixing his eyes on the janitor, Jack slid two hundred dollars into the pot. "Are you going to chicken out now?"

"Not with this golden hand." Drew hurled two crinkled hundred dollar bills into the pot, and then flipped over his cards, announcing tersely, "I call."

"A Straight Flush." Jack clapped. "Very good."

As Drew's fingers stretched toward the pot, Jack reached out to swat them away like a mother would tap her son's away from the cookie jar when dinnertime approached, and he added with cheerful vindictiveness, "But not good enough, I'm afraid. I've got a Royal Flush."

"Prove it," snarled Drew, his whole face coloring to match his ginger hair.

"If you insist." Indolently, Jack turned his cards upright, so that the janitor could read the ten, jack, queen, king, and ace of spades arrayed in his hand. "I'll flash mine, since you showed me yours."

"You slimy, cheating son-of-a-bitch," growled Drew, shoving himself away from the table with almost enough inertia to upend it. "You must've tucked those up your sleeve when you cut the deck."

"How the fuck did Silky manage to deal them to me, then?" Jack flared up, because he was smart enough to win without cheating, and he wouldn't have derived pleasure from outwitting fools if he didn't behave honestly. Growing up in Charlestown, he knew better than most that it didn't take a lot of cleverness to be a criminal. Winning without breaking the rules was much harder, so that was what Jack tried to do. "Are you blind as a bat, forgetful as a senile lady who can't find her false teeth even when she's wearing them, or just as mentally unhinged as a guy in a rubber room bouncing off the walls at the Funny Farm?"

"You're just trying to steal my money," spat out Drew, as he spun on his heel and stalked away from the table. "That's what all spoiled, rich college boys whose parents give them everything and who will never have to really work for a moment in their lives do!"

"When you called me spoiled, you must have been looking in the mirror by mistake!" Jack roared, spilling his Corona and upset only because he hadn't thought to chuck it at Drew. He was about to do his best impersonation of a Steeler linebacker by charging and tackling the janitor who had accused him of being some pampered brat like McClanahan when Rizzo and Silky latched onto an elbow each, pressing down with enough force to trap him in his chair.

"Let me up, you assholes," snapped Jack, struggling to dislodge himself from Rizzo and Silky's clutches, which were as sticky as spiderwebs.

"Not until you've calmed down." Rizzo shook his head, as Jack only fought harder at the implication he should get himself under control.

"I don't want to calm down." Jack's chin lifted, and his spine bristled. "I want to smash in that dirty bastard's face and slash his tires."

"If you're half as smart as you think you are, Jack, you'll realize that's all the more reason for us to keep you here until you calm the fuck down." Silky rolled his eyes. "Just stop threatening violence physically and verbally, then Rizzo and I will let you up if you ask nicely."


	3. Chapter 3

"_As good as drink is, it ends in thirst.__"—__**Irish Proverb **_

Ends in Thirst

At practice the next morning, Jack's brain had been replaced by a gigantic, throbbing plum bruise that felt like it was on the verge of swelling out of his skull. Once his cranium exploded, he could only imagine the shards of bone stabbing into the ice like spears, while the flecks of pus and blood spattered the scene like the aftermath of murder. It would probably be a very disgusting thing for his teammates to witness, but an extremely relieving moment for him personally—like lancing a bothersome boil. At the very least, the pain from a shattering skull would be no worse than the headache he was dealing with right now.

Everything from his neck up seemed to be twice as heavy as normal, which was probably scientific proof that beer, like mucus, could congeal in the sinuses. His eyes, as if they had been replaced in nerves but not appearance by some subterranean creature's, were too sensitive to the light and longed to be covered every time a ray reflected off the ice. As far as his mouth was concerned, it was seemingly content to remain frozen in one combination of a scowl and smirk, since it didn't want to respond to any internal commands to contort his lips into different positions. Even his nose felt—he wasn't sure because he hadn't bothered to confirm in a mirror or in the glass around the rink, because he didn't wish to know whether he looked as terrible as he felt—as red as Rudolph's nose.

Clearly his not-so-trusty hangover cure learned from his father—another bite of the dog that bit you, as the expression went—hadn't worked, but at least he had gotten to start his day off with a nice cold Corona. That Corona didn't feel so nice now, though, with the way it kept crashing and churning like an ocean around in his seasick stomach, which meant that Jack was at the tipping point of mentally swearing to God and all the saints that he would never get drunk again if they just healed his hangover.

Before Jack could discover whether his bargaining with celestial powers would have any impact on his earthly woes, Rizzo, who was probably as sensorily impaired as Jack and who had been acting like a chef by serving up turnover after turnover this practice, coughed up the puck yet again in the offensive zone, where they were trying to score against Jimmy, although with the pathetic inability to put the puck on net their side of the scrimmage was demonstrating thus far, Jimmy's time would have been more profitably spent taking a cat nap on his goalie stick.

Eric Strobel corralled the puck and spun around, his skate blades barely carving into the ice in a smooth pivot that Jack especially admired in his coordination-challenged state, where he felt lucky that both his feet—by and large—were moving in the same direction. As Eric sped toward Jack's defensive zone, Rammer, who was Jack's partner in this exercise, slammed him into the boards with enough eager force that Jack's ears rang from feet away.

The puck sailed from the edge of Eric's stick and slid across the ice to Mark Johnson, which meant that Rammer had taken himself out of position to deliver a hit again, and Jack wouldn't have cared too much if it had only been Rob McClanahan whom Rammer had smashed against the boards, since any reason to push McClanahan around was a good one in Jack's studied opinion.

Controlling the puck deftly, Mark continued to try to demolish land speed records in his race toward Janny's goal. Already feeling as if an anchor had been dropped into the ocean of his stomach, Jack fell back as he watched a two-on-one take shape with Mark Johnson and Rob McClanahan rushing toward him as he tried to position himself in the best possible place to limit their shooting and passing lanes. Unfortunately, his legs felt like blocks of concrete and his skates seemed to be cutting through sand rather than ice, which was bad news mainly because if there was a list of players Jack didn't want to be caught flat-footed against, McClanahan and Johnson were definitely high enough on it that they would need oxygen tanks to breathe.

Clenching his jaw, Jack lurched forward to pressure Mark, whose eyes gleamed as he stickhandled around Jack and ended up about an inch outside of Janny's crease.

As Jack moved to clear the crease, Mark rifled a pass over to Rob, who was lurking just outside the left paint of the crease and slid the puck under Janny's outstretched leg into the back of the net.

Fishing the puck out of Janny's goal because it gave him an excuse not to check how punch-ably smug Rob's face was, Jack muttered to his goaltender, "Sorry to leave you hanging out to dry like that, Janny."

"Doesn't matter." Janny snatched up the water bottle that was on top of his net and squirted a jet into his mouth. "I should've had that one. My fault."

While Janny might have been prepared to forgive the lapses of others, Herb wasn't ready to pardon anyone. After blowing sharply on his whistle to guarantee that he had everybody's attention riveted on him for his impending tirade, Herb snapped, "Rizzo, that must've been the tenth time you turned over the puck today! Why the hell don't you use hands instead of stones to hold your stick?"

Bringing the full brunt of his glower to rest on Rammer, Herb ranted on, "Rammer, if you're going to make that hit, you'e got to get the puck. If you don't, you've taken yourself out of position to make a hit, which makes you worse than useless as a defenseman."

Finished ripping Rammer to shreds, Herb went on tersely, glaring daggers at Jack, who wasn't even surprised when his cropped up for blame in this harangue, "As for you, Jack, if you're going to challenge Mark, then _really _challenge him. Don't just let him skate around you like you're a God damn traffic cone."

His cheeks flaming, Jack felt as badly burned as any meal Dad had tried (and, of course, failed) to cook in the oven when Mom was ill or otherwise engaged, and practice continued in this cheery vein for several hours.

When practice finally concluded, the locker room resounded with a chorus of weary complaints about Herb and his cruel coaching techniques, so that, at first, Jack initially supposed that the stream of profanities spewing from Rob's mouth was a particularly colored commentary on the day's practice before Rob shouted loudly enough to ensure that every war in the room heard, "My wallet is stolen!"

"Stolen?" repeated Eric, somewhat muffled by the shirt he was pulling over his head, after a stunned silence had swept the team like a tsunami, as if he had never encountered that verb form before in his existence. "Um, are you sure about that, Mac?"

"Of course I am, Electric, because I sure as hell didn't misplace it." Rob's withering answer was ostensibly directed toward Eric, but the coals blazing in his eyes were burning at Jack. "I never lose anything."

"Well, I don't think anyone in here took it from you, Robbie," chimed in Bill in his eminently placid, rational tone. "Why don't you look in your pockets and on the floor, okay?"

"I already checked those places," mumbled Rob, but he rummaged through his pockets and fumbled around on the floor probably so he could have the pleasure of pronouncing in a voice as tight as a drum skin, "It's not in either of those spots, and I always put my wallet in my sock, so I doubt it would've moved by itself, anyway, unless it's sprouted legs since I last saw it."

"Take a deep breath," Bill advised. "There's got to be an explanation for all this."

"Yeah, and it better be a fucking good one," snarled Rob, jerking his chin at Jack. "So, what do you have to say for yourself, O'Callahan? I'm all ears."

"I didn't steal your wallet, McClanahan." Jack's eyebrows contemptuously. "I don't take people's trash, if that's what you're implying."

"My wallet isn't trash." Rob bristled, as if an insult to one of his carefully selected, upscale accessories was an affront to every particle of his refined, upper-middle class being. "It was fine leather filled with perfectly legal tender, but I should've known that something terrible would happen to it the moment I was assigned a locker next to _someone like you_."

Rob lobbed out the final three words as though they were grenades, and Jack didn't even have to ask what the phrase meant. Low-class. Provincial. Common. Crass. Plain, poor, and hopeless. Jack was the rough neighborhood where he was born and raised, now and forever, world without end. That was the understanding.

"I didn't touch your fucking wallet." Jack growled, turning everything in his locker inside-out and dumping it on the floor for Rob's flinty inspection. "It's not here. See, asshole?"

"I see only what you want me to see." Rob's lips thinned into a line narrow and honed as a knife. "If you're a thief, you could just as easily be a liar to boot, so the fact that my wallet isn't in your locker proves nothing."

"What the fuck would prove that I'm not a crook?" demanded Jack, folding his arms across his chest to prevent himself from punching Rob into peach cobbler. "Do I have to search the entire arena from top to bottom with you until we find your wretched wallet before you believe me, huh?"

"You've probably just hidden the wallet somewhere else, but you won't pretend to find it until sufficient time has elapsed so that you can act like you didn't know where the hell it was." With a derisive snort, Rob stuck his nose high enough in the air that it likely was at risk of bleeding from the altitude. "I'll be gracious, though, and not press charges as long as the wallet and all its contents are returned to me by midnight."

Noting inwardly that it was a charming tendency of many brought up in luxury and ease to declare they were taking the high road while actually traveling the low one, Jack suggested tartly, "Why don't we comb through that trash can in the corner? Your wallet bears such a resemblance to litter that it might have wound up in the garbage by accident."

Eyeing Jack with loathing intense enough to rival a thousand fiery suns, Rob crossed over to the garbage can, upended it with a bang, and sifted through the debris with his tennis shoes.

Deciding to be the better person—whether out of defiant Irish pride or the overwhelming, traditional Catholic urge to flagellate and martyr oneself—Jack knelt among the detritus of locker room life, seeking some trace of Rob's wallet but uncovering only used gum wrappers, empty soda cans, and wads of tape, and, thank God for small mercies, nothing more revolting than that.

When he and Rob had sorted through every piece of trash, they dumped all the garbage back into the can, and, without exchanging so much as a word or a look, continued to search along the floor and benches.

After a time that felt so depressingly long that Jack didn't want to check his watch for fear of what it would tell him, he and Rob had explored what seemed like every crevice and garbage can in the whole rink, a disgusting process that left him with a newfound appreciation for the travails sanitation workers endured on a daily basis, and had discovered nothing that even bore the faintest resemblance to Rob's Ralph Lauren wallet.

"I don't get it," Rob burst out in a voice rusty from disuse, because they hadn't spoken to each other since they began the search, as they rummaged through what seemed like their hundredth trash can. This one was beside the vending machines and so was exceptionally odiferous from the remains of snacks people had lost interest in eating. "I remember clearly as a movie picture stowing my wallet in my sock, and nobody who isn't on the team goes in the locker room, so if it wasn't one of you guys who stole it, who the hell had the opportunity and the motive to rob me?"

"If it wasn't one of you guys," Jack echoed, arching an eyebrow, as his hand closed with a crinkle of aluminum around an old Coke can sticky with sugary fingerprints. "Does that mean my time on my knees in the trash has convinced you of my innocence?"

"Your innocence or your idiocy." Rob shrugged, his brown eyes suddenly alight with a message Jack couldn't translate. "If you were a smart thief, you would've returned your plunder to me by now, so we could both get the fuck out of here instead of wading through these endless mounds of crap."

"Let's look more deeply into what you said." Putting on his best detective tone, Jack tossed a pile of rubbish back into the garbage can. "It might contain the clue we need to solve this mystery."

"Crap?" Rob's nose wrinkled. "What? Do you think somebody flushed my wallet down a toilet or something?"

"That would be really shitty." Jack shuddered, thinking that his need to be a good Samaritan would probably perish the second sewage became involved in the search. "Let's not even consider that possibility right now."

"What were you getting at, then?" Rob's forehead furrowed as he chucked more garbage back into the can.

"You said nobody but the team goes into the locker room, although that's not really true," pointed out Jack, thawing the last of the trash back into the can. "Our coaches come in and so does the janitor."

"Yeah, Drew goes in there all the time to clean up when we're at practice." His face shining with purpose, Rob pushed himself to his feet and set off down the hallway at a brisk pace. "Perhaps he saw something suspicious when he went in there today or noticed someone weird hanging around in the hallway. He might be in his office. We could try to go ask him."

"That's probably the most brilliant idea you'll come up with in a month, so we'll give it a whirl." Jack smirked and caught up with Rob, who was rushing down the corridor toward Drew's office.

The door was open, so they hurried inside without knocking, Rob greeting Drew, who dropped a copy of the _Star Tribune _on top of a bulging mountain of paper in astonishment at their unexpected entrance, rather breathlessly with the polite smile all well-off people flashed when striving to assure a menial laborer that they were all united in some vague, shared cause, "Hello, Drew. Long time, no see or speak. How have you been?"

"I can't complain too much, and even if I could, nobody would listen or give a shit." Drew's eyes were blinking at twice the normal rate and had difficulty fixing on Rob's face or anywhere else for that matter, as far as Jack could see. "How about you, Robbie?"

"Not too great." Jack could hear Rob taking a deep breath before taking the huge plunge into conversational no man's land. "I can't find my wallet, and I wanted to know if you'd seen anyone suspicious around or that sort of thing."

"No." Drew's palms crawled like spiders over the newspaper covering the bulk of his paperwork. "I haven't seen anybody suspicious except you two boys."

Adding up Drew's nervous mannerisms, the lump under his papers on the desk, and the debt he had confessed to yesterday night, Jack started to balance out an equation that equaled Drew's guilt in stealing Rob's wallet.

"Maybe there's an article about a convict on the run from the law that could give us a hint." Jack snatched the _Star Tribune _out of Drew's grasp and then feigned a gasp at the sight of the pile of papers. "Wow, you look swamped by paperwork. I'll just file these for you, sir, so you can get back to the joys of scrubbing toilets and mopping floors."

"That won't be necessary," Drew sputtered in a rush of syllables that tripped over one another's heels on the exit from his mouth, but Jack had already scooped up the whole pile, revealing a leather Ralph Lauren wallet.

Before Drew could react, Jack's hand darted like lightning to seize the wallet and toss it at Rob, who was so rattled that he nearly fumbled the catch.

"That looks a hell of a lot like Rob's missing wallet. You don't mind if he takes a look at it, do you, Drew?" crowed Jack.

"It is mine." Rob's voice was scarcely above a whisper as he flipped open the wallet to find himself staring into a miniature image of himself on his driver's license. Shaking his head as he glanced up at Drew again, he said simply, "I trusted you, Drew."

"As hired help," scoffed Drew. "I know how you rich college boys think about your janitors."

"No, as a person." Rob gnawed on his bottom lip. "Obviously, I was wrong to do that."

"I—" Drew was plainly fabricating an excuse as he spoke. "I just found your wallet on the floor in the locker room, and I took it back to my office for safekeeping, that's all. No need to be a bastard and assume the worst of me, you know."

"Why didn't you return it to me when I entered your office or mentioned that I'd lost it?" Skeptically, Rob tilted his head. "Those seem like prime opportunities to come forward with the wallet if you had any intention of doing so."

"I, er, forgot." Drew massaged his temples as if developing a migraine from manufacturing all these falsehoods.

"Right." Rob gritted his teeth loudly enough for Jack to hear the dental damage. "I see you took a generous fifty dollar tip for finding the wallet. How unconventional, since normally a reward is left to the discretion of the person the object is returned to, after all."

Flushing to the roots of his ginger hair as he pulled the fifty bucks out of his pocket and pushed it across the desk toward Rob, Drew explained, "It's just a loan that I swear I was going to pay back when I got my next pay check—"

"Oh, sure." Jack sneered while Rob returned the money to his wallet. "If you didn't gamble and booze it all away first."

"It's for my daughter's—my Molly's—school supplies." Ignoring Jack like a speck on the wall, Drew made his appeal to Rob. "She's so clever, and I just want to give here a better future, but I can't afford—"

"Yep, because you blew all your cash in a bar yesterday." Jack whistled in mock admiration. "What a responsible, self-sacrificing adult. That's a Parent of the Year Award worthy decision right there."

"Jack." Drew exhaled gustily. "I know what you're trying to do, and I'm the first one to admit that I haven't been a saint, but can you honestly look me in the eyeballs and tell me that you've never in your life made a mistake?"

Jack's spine stiffened. "We get to ask the questions here, not you, villain."

"Maybe I'm not the most competent dad in the world, and perhaps I'm not the most responsible adult on the planet, but I love my daughter, and I learn from what I do wrong." Drew's jaw trembled like Jello. "I shouldn't be punished by having my daughter taken away from me, and that's what I'm afraid might happen if the authorities find out about Molly showing up to school without any supplies. No one deserves that."

"You want to talk about deserving?" hissed Jack, his hands balling into fists as he wondered if he was shouting more at Drew or his own father. "What about a childhood of coming home from school and wondering whether you're going to see your father passed out on the sofa, stinking of cheap whiskey? Or hiding the invitations to Open School Night in the hope that your dad won't show up wasted and humiliate you in front of all your teachers? Do you think I deserved that, huh?"

The room went so quiet that the walls seemed to have a pulse. "Do you think _she _deserves that?" Jack corrected, cheeks ablaze, as he internally cursed his big mouth, and it's endless efforts to ruin his life. He tried to pretend that he couldn't see the pitying glance Rob shot him, because the last person he wanted feeling bad for him was the snot Rob McClanahan, who probably had a staid, suburban father who would never even dream of doing anything that the neighbors could gossip about.

"Drew, did you even really think about what you were doing before you stole from me?" Rob demanded, finally taking his eyes off Jack. "Do you realize that if I report this, you could be fired and find it very hard to use this job as a reference, so, basically, you risked a lifetime of income for a paltry fifty bucks?"

"Is that what's going to happen to me?" Drew gripped his desk so tightly that his knuckles became white as marble. "Are you going to tell on me?"

"Nope, that's not what I'm saying at all, as you'd know if you just thought for once!" Rob's fingers tore at his hair. "I'm saying that if you're going to ruin your life, reputation, and future you should put a higher price tag on that selling out than fifty measly dollars."

"That's middle class talk." Drew's lips pursed. "The middle class worries about morals, and the lower class is just concerned with survival. My Molly needs the school supplies now and not a week in the future."

"Oh, Drew." Rob sighed. "I would've been happy to help if you'd only asked for it, but I don't give charity to thieves."

There it was, Jack thought bitterly. The privileged person spitting into the face of the beggar grabbing at his ankles for alms because the beggar was deemed in some way gross. At that instant, he didn't know whether he hated Rob for his arrogant dismissal of a wretched creature or Drew for making all lower class people seem like repugnant beings with moral compasses that only pointed south.

"I wasn't about to ask for help." Drew's chin lifted obstinately.

"But you'd steal." Jack, who had always possessed to much pride to beg or to rob, rolled his eyes in disgust. "You're a regular pillar of the community with that attitude."

"I never claimed to be such," snarled Drew. "That claim was all the middle class."

"Give me the list of supplies your daughter needs," Rob ordered abruptly, and Jack was reminded of the few pedestrians in Boston who would duck into a deli to purchase a sandwich for a hungry beggar because they didn't trust him not to squander cash on drugs. Jack had always thought of those rare beings as the best practitioners of charity since they weren't so naive that they ended up doing harm in their attempts to do good but they weren't so jaded that they never stopped to help another in need. Maybe Rob had been brought up right, after all.

Fumbling around in his pocket to withdraw a wrinkled list that he thrust across the desk into Rob's proffered palm, Drew muttered, "I thought you just said you didn't help thieves, Robbie."

Scribbling down the list of supplies into a blank page of his planner, Rob replied in a tone crisp as popcorn, "I don't help thieves, but I do help innocent children like your little girl."

Before Drew could respond to this revelation, Rob shoved the list back across the desk to Drew. "I'll return tomorrow with the supplies your daughter needs." Then his face hardened, and he warned in a voice that contained more ice than the Arctic, "_Don__'__t _ever try to steal from me again, Drew. If you do, I'll report you. I won't take any pleasure in it, but justice and my conscience will require that I do it. Get it?"

"Definitely." Drew managed to choke out, nodding. "Thank you for helping me."

"I'm doing this for your little girl, not you," Rob reminded Drew, spinning on his heel and leaving the office without any other form of farewell.

Not exactly wanting to spend more time with a robber, Jack chose the lesser of the two evils by exiting the office and joining Rob in the hallway. As they wended their way back to the locker room to collect their bags, Rob commented, speaking with an awkwardness that suggested his vocal cords were obstructed by gravel, "I misjudged you when I accused you of being a thief, and I'd like to make that up to you somehow."

Pushing open the door into the otherwise vacant locker room, Jack gave his most menacing scowl to encourage Rob to keep a wary distance. "What on God's green earth makes you think for one second that I'd want you to make anything up to me, McClanahan, when that would involve us having something to do with each other, the very idea of which threatens to make me barf?"

"You helped me find my wallet." Rob scraped at his cuticles as they walked over to their lockers to gather their belongings. "So, I just thought—"

"Never mind about what you thought." Jack slung his duffel over his shoulder. "Obviously, it was wrong." Then, because he couldn't suppress it as he sauntered toward the locker room door, he burst out with a laugh that contained a million cutting edges of glass. "Shit, McClanahan, were you actually under the impression that I helped you find your wallet for your sake? I just did it for my own honor and satisfaction, not to make you happy. In fact, the arrogance inherent in your assumption that I would want you to make anything up to me is exactly why we'll never be able to get along. Now I've got to dash, so—as we say in the back alleys of Charlestown— why don't you just go fuck yourself with a loaded gun?"

Before the door slammed in his wake, Jack could hear Rob retorting, "Right, and, as we say on the cul-de-sacs of North Oaks, why don't you go get embezzled by your accountant?"


End file.
